Migration of data files on enterprise and personal computers is important for multiple reasons, to include providing backup capabilities for disaster recovery and work transfer. The typical scenario assumes that the data will be migrated back to the same personal computer or a computer with a similar drive layout structure. That is, for each volume, its corresponding backup is an exact replica of the original volume. For instance, a user may have an original system with three volumes: C: (SYSTEM), D: (DATA), and E: (DATA). The user may choose to migrate one or more of the volumes as a copy to a backup system, wherein each volume as a whole is migrated to a computer with a similar drive layout structure. The user may also choose to migrate part of a volume, wherein selected files of the volume are migrated as a copy to the backup system.
On the other hand, migration of volumes to a computer system with a non-homogenous drive layout structure is not currently accomplished. This is a common user experience. For instance, a user may have an office desktop with three volumes or drives and would like to migrate files in those volumes to an office laptop that has only two partitions. This is not possible without reconfiguration of the drive layouts in one or both of the original and backup systems.
To help illustrate the problem of migration between systems with non-homogenous drive layout structures, a user may have an original system with three volumes: C: (SYSTEM), D: (DATA), and E: (DATA). The user wishes to migrate one or more volumes to a system with a non-homogeneous drive layout structure, such as, a laptop that only has two volumes: C: (SYSTEM) and D: (DATA). For instance, the user may wish to migrate volumes in the original system containing data (D: and E:) to the laptop that only has one volume available for data: D: (DATA). That is, the user wishes to but is prevented from migrating two volumes D: (DATA), and E: (DATA) to one volume D: (DATA) in a way that files of both data volumes in the original system are preserved.
The same user may be presented with a similar migration problem when initially backing up volumes and then migrating the backed up volumes to a system with a non-homogenous drive layout structure. For instance, given an original system with three volumes: C: (SYSTEM), D: (DATA), and E: (DATA), the user may independently back up volumes D: and E: without further migrating these files to an end system. Later, the user wishes to but is prevented from migrating the two independently backed up volume images D: and E: to a single drive D: in the above described laptop.
However, in the above examples, migration to a system with a non-homogeneous drive layout structure is not possible using conventional techniques. This is unsatisfactory in many situations where users utilizing multiple computing systems with disparate drive layout structures wish to migrate volumes of data between the two systems.